Songs of Enchantment (30 page)

Dad listened to my ravings intently. He listened without
moving from his chair. He listened, it seemed, without hearing me. Mum spent the whole day going from one herbalist to another, praying loudly along the street. None of the herbalists appeared to be able to do anything. They all said that the chains tying us down must first be broken by us before they can be of any help. By the evening my energy ran out. My jaws ached. And horses stampeded over the flowers and visions that seared my brain. The curious thing is that when I stopped raving I saw butterflies everywhere, fluttering amid the vibrations of which objects are composed. Then I saw a clear field with a white tree in the middle of it, on which the dead carpenter lay asleep in the topmost branches. And sometimes when I ceased raving Ade would come into the room and sit beside me with a sweet smile on his face. On one occasion he said:

‘Your father is right.’

‘About what?’ I asked.

‘What?’ dad said.

‘Everything is alive,’ Ade continued. ‘There are some things that can make a stone cry.’

‘Like what?’

‘What?’ dad asked again.

‘Many things,’ Ade ventured. ‘A dry wind, a dying bird, the death of a nation, the birth of a witch, the laughter of angels, the songs of the devil, the dreams of a toad, the piss of a goat, the serenity of a tyrant, the destruction of a people’s history, the triumph of the wrong, the thoughts of a butterfly, the dreams of the dead.’

‘How come I’ve never seen a stone cry?’ I asked.

‘Because you don’t use your eyes.’

‘Why should a stone cry?’ asked dad, sitting up and turning his blind eyes towards me.

‘How should I use my eyes?’

‘By not using your head first.’

‘But how?’

‘Azaro, what’s wrong with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s not the eyes that see.’

‘Then what does?’

‘It’s the light in the eyes that sees.’

‘What light?’

‘Are those lights back?’ asked dad.

‘No.’

‘The light that makes everything alive.’

‘So how do I use the light?’

‘You have to discover it first.’

‘How do I discover it?’

‘Azaro, who are you talking to, eh?’

‘No one,’ I said.

‘I better go,’ said Ade.

‘Don’t go.’

‘Your grandfather is worried about all of you.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Have you seen the rainbows?’

‘No.’

‘Have you seen the trees turning into ghosts?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you seen my father?’

I was silent. Dad knocked me on the head. He was quite frustrated. He got up and began feeling the space around me.

‘Are you talking to yourself again?’

‘No.’

‘So you haven’t seen my father?’ Ade pressed on.

‘He nearly killed me last night.’

‘Why?’

‘He asked me to bury him.’

For a moment Ade vanished. Then, after a few seconds, he re-appeared behind me.

‘I have a message for you.’

‘From who?’

‘Your spirit-companions.’

‘What is the message?’

Dad lifted me up and held me tightly to him. He was
crying. He was crying that his son had gone mad. He irritated me with his heavings.

‘You will find out what the message is when my father has been buried.’

Then Ade was silent. Then, with the smile becoming even sweeter on his face, he said:

‘I’m going now.’

‘Wait!’

‘What?’

Dad covered my mouth with his palm. I bit him.

‘What?’

‘Are you still my friend?’

‘I am your father,’ dad said, sadly.

Ade vanished altogether. When he vanished the bed and the table, the walls and the ceiling, the cupboard and the jumble of clothes and the rafters and the air in the room burst into great flutterings of butterfly lights and I cried:

‘EVERYTHING IS ALIVE! EVERYTHING MOVES!’

And dad put me down on the bed and sat on his chair of golden butterfly lights. I saw him rocking on air, with his feet on the centre table that was ablaze with dense motion. An emerald wind blew into the room, bringing mum’s footsteps closer. And I saw that the darkness is nothing more than vibrations moving more slowly, and light nothing more than vibrations moving more swiftly. I noticed also that there is darkness in light, and light in darkness. Everything in the room shimmered and the glow of things made my head swell. I stared with amazement at the radiance of solid things and at the hidden glimmer of the air. Then mum came into the room, surrounded with a barely perceptible aura of emerald lights, bearing aloes and oregano herbs which she sprinkled on my head. She also had a piece of kaolin in her hand, and it had an absorbent quality made to soak up all the bad vibrations around me. With the kaolin firmly grasped, she circled my head thrice with her hand, uttering incantations and prayers, and then, taking the bad things around me with her, she went and threw the kaolin out on to the road. When
she left my head cooled and the shimmering of things ceased and the radiance of the air returned to its hidden condition, but I saw the spirits of aborted babies crawling about and voices from realms both distant and near called my secret names, weaving them in sweet threnodies, and the forms of the dead appeared to me in flashes of darkness, and my head caught fire, and I began to rave again.

When the night became very dark dad ordered mum to sit beside me. He left the door open. He lit no candles. I could still see him rocking on air, could hear his jaws working, could feel him reaching for the place of spells and silences within, spells with which to cast a gentle enchantment over my ravings, silences with which to quieten the excessive motion of my being. I could even perceive the film of butterfly wings growing thicker over his eyes as he stared into a dim yellow paradise, full of doves and crystals and rubies and beings whose hearts gave off a brilliant diamond light. He stared into the yellow paradise, which was drawing closer, which would enter him briefly and leave huge unoccupied spaces inside him, spaces potent with yearning and dreams of a higher, hidden reality. And when the raving began to pour from me again, dad cleared his throat, creaked his neck twice, and started to speak. He spoke as if words were spells, as if words were a kind of magical wind that could blow away the bad vapours of the spirit.

‘Last night,’ he said, ‘I dreamt that I was in a world of rainbows. There were beautiful trees everywhere and they knew the hidden cures for all human diseases. The trees could talk and they were telling me their life stories when a tall man with no eyes in his head came up to me and said: “Do you remember me?” “No,” I replied. Then he smiled and went away. A long time passed as I watched him go. Then people appeared and began to cut down the trees. The rainbows started to fade. The world became darker. That was when I realised that I had a sun in my head. But it was going out slowly. I was worried, so I looked up at the sky. Then an alligator pepper seed fell on my head, knocking me
down, and when I got up the tall man came back again. This time he had one big eye. The other socket was empty. “Do you remember me now?” he asked. “No,” I replied. “Look around you,” he said. I looked. All the rainbows had gone. All the beautiful colours of the world had gone. All the lovely lights and the sweet music had gone. The trees were turning into stumps. Some of them were bleeding. Many of them were ghosts. The air was dry. “Where have the rainbows gone?” I asked the man. “People like you have been destroying them,” he replied. “How?” “With your eyes,” he said. Then I realised that I could see in my dream. “Who are you?” I asked him. “Some people think I am an animal,” he answered. “People like who?” “People like you,” he said. “Are you an animal?” I asked. The man laughed. He laughed for a long time. His laughter frightened and confused me. When he stopped he looked at me and said: “If I am an animal, what kind of an animal am I? An antelope, or a leopard?” That was all he said. I didn’t understand him at all.’

Dad paused for a moment. His silence baffled me as much as his dream did.

‘Then what happened?’

Dad turned his face in my direction and, in a low voice, said:

‘Nothing. I woke up.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes.’

The room fairly quivered with the unfinished riddle of his dream. We were silent. The darkness and my incomprehension were beginning to re-awaken the raving in me when dad cleared his throat again, and said:

‘Let me tell you a story.’

‘Yes, tell us a story,’ I said.

‘Once upon a time,’ he began, ‘there was a hunter. He was a great hunter and he could imitate all the different sounds and noises of animals. He understood their language. He also had a beautiful voice and when he sang even the
fiercest animals would stop what they were doing and listen. He was so successful as a hunter that there wasn’t a day when he didn’t bring home a dead deer or duiker or a wild boar. It so happened that one day his luck changed. He tried hard, but he couldn’t kill anything. He didn’t even catch a single rabbit in any of his traps. The animals had begun to understand his tricks. This went on for seven days. All through that time he remained in the forest, swearing that he wouldn’t return home till he had caught something. On the seventh day he was so tired with trying that he fell asleep at the foot of a tree. In his sleep he heard the forest talking about him, planning the dreadful things they would do to him for killing off all the beautiful animals who hadn’t harmed him in any way. He was in a deep sleep when a strange light flashed past him. He woke up suddenly, and saw a woman standing in front of a mighty anthill. The woman looked left and right to make sure no one was watching her. And then she turned into an antelope and went into the anthill. The man was astonished.’

‘How can an antelope enter an anthill?’ I asked.

‘It seemed like an anthill,’ dad said, ‘but it was really a palace.’

‘How is that?’

‘It was a palace that only certain beings can see.’

Dad paused.

‘Your story isn’t going anywhere,’ mum said, in the dark.

‘A story is not a car,’ dad replied. ‘It is a road, and before that it was a river, a river that never ends.’

‘And then what happened?’ I asked.

‘The next day, the man returned to the same spot, at the same time, and pretended to be asleep against the same tree. He heard the forest talking about him again, planning something cunning and terrible to do to him. Then the light flashed past a second time. He opened his eyes and saw the most beautiful woman in the world standing at the door of the great anthill. She was naked and her skin shone like polished bronze and she was covered in golden bangles round
her neck and ankles and up her arms. Beads of precious stones gave off wonderful lights about her slender waist. The man fell in love with her instantly. The woman looked left and right and then turned into an antelope and disappeared into the secret palace of the anthill. The man went home. He could not sleep. He could not eat. All he could think of was the beautiful woman. He fell so completely in love with her that he swore he would marry her even if it was the last thing he did on earth.’

Dad stopped abruptly, alarming us.

‘Fetch me some water,’ he said. ‘This story is making me thirsty.’

I rushed out to get some water and when I came back mum was sitting at dad’s feet, stroking his ankle. Dad drank the water and resumed his story, clearing his throat, while outside a mysterious new wind was blowing.

‘The next day the man went to the same spot very early. He pretended again to be asleep against the tree. This time the forest was silent. He kept his eyes shut and waited for the strange light to flash past him. He waited for a long time. Evening turned to night. The forest began to laugh. The man still went on pretending. Then when it was so dark that all he could see was the darkness itself a big light flashed past him. The light was so big that he jumped up, with his heart beating very fast . . .’

At that precise moment of the story the wind outside blew suddenly into our room, banging the door against the bed. Then I heard a deep growling noise that made me jump. Dad caught his breath. When I recovered, the room was silent. Then I noticed that dad was staring with an uncanny intensity at something near the door. I turned and looked, and saw nothing. Then the wind blew harder, blowing in the emerald form of a majestic and mighty leopard. A powerful light, swarming with the green vibrations of butterflies, surrounded the great invisible beast. It had eyes of diamonds and it sat there, on its tail, like a giant cat. Its wild and feral presence filled the little room
with the vast smells of unknown forests. None of us moved.

‘What are you two looking at?’ mum asked, mesmerised by our concentration.

I couldn’t speak for the unearthly wonder of the emerald manifestation. And for a long moment dad was silent. Then, just as the sign of the leopard had gatecrashed its way into our lives, dad let it enter the spell of his narration. Rarely taking his face away from the radiant form, dad continued with his story, his voice quivering.

‘As I was saying, the light flashed past the hunter and it was so great that he jumped up, his heart pounding as if an earthquake had taken place inside him. In the darkness he could see the woman, because she shone. Her skin gave off light. Her golden bangles glittered around her in the moonlight of her mystery. But before the woman could change into an antelope, the hunter started to sing. He sang to her in the most enchanting voice he had ever managed. He sang to her with his heart full of weeping. And with his sweet voice he begged her to accept him as a husband, swearing that if she refused he would kill himself at the very door of the anthill.’

‘Typical man!’ mum said.

‘At first, the woman was shy, and tried to hide her nakedness. But he went on singing, he sang with all his soul, all his love, and he went down on his knees. The woman was moved by his singing and his gesture. Then, relenting a bit, she asked him how long he had been watching her. Still singing, the hunter told her the truth. Maybe it was because he told her the truth that she smiled. Then she said that she would marry him on one condition. The hunter swore by the many names of the great God that he would honour the condition to the day he died. And her condition was that he must keep what she is a secret for ever, he must never reveal to anyone or anything the mystery of her origin. He swore that he wouldn’t, and that if he did he deserved just punishment.’